on May 25, 2022 | Subject: Space
InSight’s latest selfie.
Image: NASA / JPL-Caltech
NASA’s InSight Mars lander sent its latest selfie from its dust-covered solar panels and deck, in an image taken on its 1211th “salt” or Martian mission day on April 24.
Insight has been orbiting the red planet for the past 3.5 years, capturing images and data that allow scientists to zoom in on its crust and core and refine patterns of how the planets evolved from dust orbiting the sun.
Insight’s scientific mission is due to end in the summer, after which it will be exhausted. The lander is powered by solar energy, but the dust covering the seven-foot-wide solar panels has reduced its production capacity from about 5,000 watts of salt to 500 watts of salt. After these panels generated power equivalent to operating an electric oven for 40 minutes, they can now power only one for 10 minutes. The Lander is equipped with two lithium-ion rechargeable batteries with a capacity of 25 ampere hours for energy storage.
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With these restrictions, even taking selfies requires some calculation to stay within the spacecraft’s budget. The selfie hand will now enter a “retirement position”, according to NASA.
“The hand has to be moved several times to take a full selfie. As InSight’s dusty solar panels produce less energy, the team will soon put the robotic arm of the lander in a resting position (called the “retirement position”) for the last time in May 2022, “said NASA JPL.
InSight launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on May 5, 2018 and landed on Mars on November 26, 2018, six minutes after hitting the atmosphere of Mars at a speed of 12,300 miles per hour (19,800 kilometers per hour). according to NASA. This was the eighth landing on Mars in human history.
The dust played a significant role in the InSight landing craft’s ability to continue the mission. It is believed that behind the death of NASA’s Opportunity rover is considered an epic dust storm on Mars in 2018. A similar storm could threaten the mission of InSight. The threat of dust is twofold: dust storms block available sunlight, while dust directly on solar panels reduces their ability to absorb sunlight.
In September 2021, on its 1000th mission salt, InSight measured a 4.2 magnitude earthquake that helped scientists see what was happening beneath the surface of Mars.
Located on the dark side of Mars at the time, the dust on the solar panels was already limiting their power. NASA is using Insight’s robotic arm to sprinkle sand near a solar panel, hoping gusts of wind will cause the pellets to sweep away some of the dust. The plan worked.
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Then, on January 7, 2022, InSight went into safe mode after a large dust storm blocked sunlight from the solar panels. But by this time, the implementation of the “sand cleaning” technique had become difficult due to the reduced energy available. InSight engineers hoped the whirlwind would clear the dust of the panels and limited the use of scientific tools. By February 15, the initial levels of the solar panels had returned to pre-storm levels.
InSight’s on-board data management and processing computers are derived from NASA’s 2014 Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution of Mars (MAVEN) missions and its 2011 lunar gravity recovery and Inland Laboratory (GRAIL) missions. there are two spare computers. Its core is a radiation-cured 115.5 MHz CPU with a PowerPC 750 architecture called RAD 750, which was made by BAE Systems.
Its flight software is written in C and C ++ on the VxWorks real-time operating system, which monitors the spacecraft’s health, checks for execution commands, and manages communications and control. It also checks for error commands and processes corrective steps when it finds irregularities.
Animation of the last selfie.
Image: NASA / JPL-Caltech
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